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Day 3: Family.

Day 3. Another round of methotrexate and continued prophylaxis drugs. Focusing on playing the long game.

My sister came to visit for the day/night yesterday thanks to the gracious gift from my friend Matt Ogawa. She flew into SF in the morning, hung out all afternoon, we had a slumber party in my room!, and then she left from El Paso again this afternoon. It was such a treat getting to see her. Literally, because she brought a huge bag of snacks and candy. Figuratively, well, because it’s always comforting to see family when you’re not feeling well, duh. 😉 I polished off an entire bag of Haribo gummi bears in less than an hour of her arrival, which promptly led to an annoying stomach ache (shocker) for the next few hours. Either way, they were delicious. And I reveled in the childlike state I reverted to upon completion of the bag, not to mention sugar high.

At night, we watched the ever-so-glamorous Teen Witch (1989) upon recommendation from my friend Graham, who also visited yesterday. Let me say, if you haven’t seen it yet, do it — it’s streaming on Netflix. It’s a completely self-indulgent, 80s chick-flick teen movie. Over the top with ridiculous hair, clothes, white people rapping, shameless teen make out scenes, and of course, implausible magic. A cult classic for sure and a definite keeper for the TCM vaults. One of the best scenes:

To help pass the time, I also recently downloaded the game SPORE. An oldie but a goodie from back in the day. The premise of the game is you begin as a microbe and evolve your way into being a higher-order being and then build and develop civilizations. This was a game I always wanted to play as a kid but never got around to doing, so I figured, why not?

My lymphocyte, platelet, and neutrophil counts continue to plummet (almost zeroed out now!) while my hemoglobin has steadily increased over the past two days. This has been interesting because I haven’t had this much hemoglobin in my body in the past 6 months so adjusting to the richly oxygenated state of things has been interesting. I’m super mentally aware, but physically exhausted and still not about to focus with much high acuity on things yet. Even playing piano has been a struggle.

I’m officially neutropenic now, which means I have to be extra careful about not getting infections, so I wear masks in public spaces, etc. I’m getting more and more thrombocytopenic, so I have to be careful not to haphazardly cut myself or bump into things to avoid scars and nasty bruises. All in all, I’ve sort of put myself into a “bubble boy” mindset trying to keep myself out of the way from all possible harm.

I also, got my Hickman dressings removed today! Yay! I now just have a tube sticking out of my chest. #bionic